Sunday Sunshine

I should be writing my essay on the ideology of Augustus's marriage and childbearing laws but instead I am here reading blogs (and writing one) and writing complaint emails. I am really not very good at those as I kind of end up saying look this was bad, but don't get upset it is really not as bad as it sounds. Oh and of course I am drinking tea and eating cake. I am bit concerned about the size of my waistline after this weekend as I haven't had a single ounce of self control (and I have no idea why self-control is measured in ounces it just is).

Apart from complaint emails and cake eating I bring you some iphone photos from this week -

This is a photo wall hanging/ art thingy that I am working on for a friend of mine. I stay at her house a fair bit and she has a cat, a pretty amazing cat which gets into absolutely everything. As I am a bit snap happy with the iphone I have ended up with a tonne of photos of which I have printed out (some) and punched holes in the corners (so much harder than it should have been) so I can string them all together and magnet them onto her fridge. I also had a couple of pens I brought when I was in Japan last year especially for writing on photos, and have written some captions on. I'll try and get a photo of it hanging up at her place this week.

This is a detail from a building along Collins St that I noticed and thought was pretty.

And of course Darwin with his cheeky toothy grin. Taken this morning in the sun and after I had cleaned out his yard which contained an array of bones, pieces of foam, fabric, the handle off a bucket and a piece of chewed plastic pipe. Given that I cleared his yard a few weeks ago I'm not sure where he manages to get all these treasures but they are safely in the bin now. The oddly shaped shadow is me and Mum's dog Mopsy who insists on being in close contact whenever possible.

Now I think it is time to get back to the essay. I have already carefully mapped out my week of work, uni, homework, excercise and social activities and now just need to get into gear to get everything on the list done so as to not be a mess by the end of next week. Onward I go.

In Apology for my absence I bring you photos

Well as you can tell I spend a lot more time reading blogs than I do writing my own but I still have dreams of being this organised being who posts regularly and has lots of awesomeness to show for it.......it may never happen but I can keep hoping right!

In apology for my long absence I bring you pictures from my new(ish) iphone. My new(ish) red gumboots just before Darwin and I went for a walk this morning. (Of course Darwin was on his pink lead so that we colour clashed).

Darwin himself. Helping me with my uni readings. Not at all trying to convince me to give him treats and let him sleep inside. His belief in his right to sleep inside and my belief that he should sleep outside is a nightly discussion involving Darwin lying down as flat as possible on his mat (making him an impossible dead weight to lift) and me coaxing him to get up and ending up offering him a treat. Poor Darwin falls for the treat everytime and then is lead out to his yard - where he settles down to sleep rather quickly.

The fire has been burning away at our house all day long. Trying to hold back the chill. Only marginally successful. Despite a few days of warmth the other week, winter is still definitely here.

Now I must post this and feed Darwin. He has been giving long and loud yawns to remind me that he is outside and patiently waiting for his dinner and then to be let inside to sleep while we watch tv followed by the completion of the evening with a discssuon about where he will be sleeping.

Sunshine-y Day

Sadly the sun is starting to set for today :-( but the sun today reminds me that winter is beginning to wind to a close and (hopefully) I will have a few nice months before the full heat of summer arrives.

Sunday morning I headed back to Ballarat to hang out with my parents and Darwin (and various other pets). A friend of mine is currently packing up her life and preparing to head overseas. I caught up with her on Fri and Sat and both days we spent some of our conversation discussing spring cleaning and how much stuff we seem to have accumulated over time. I have been thinking about having a good clean out of everything for awhile as our household will be expanding next year. I also remember the ridiculous accumulation of stuff that we had to clean out of our last rental property and I don't want our current place to be the same.

I began by going through some of the stuff stored in my old room at home. I came up with a few items that I can easily part with....looked hopelessly at a pile of things that I am not yet ready to part with but have no real everyday use for.

Then I got started on a project that Mum and I came up with a few months ago when we were cleaning out her fabric stash. The first stage of the process looks like this -

The project is a rag rug. These two balls are made up of cut up strips of old clothes and the un-usable scraps of fabric in my stash that I could never bring myself to throw out. I probably half way through joining all the fabric and clothes that I already have for this project before I start attacking my wardrobe for more items to cut up.......

While I was searching through things I found some VERY OLD craft projects of mine -

This is probably my first attempt at crochet (which I now can't remember how to do) from either the summer before or after Year 12 (which is ten years ago now - yikes). I also found three nice sized balls of wool with these squares so maybe I will finish making something from this.

I also found these squares which I think I started at some point in the middle of high school.

In need of some desperate blocking but I was interested to see that my tension had settled down by this stage in time. Not sure what I will do with them - maybe sew them into the learn to knit afghan that I started at the beginning of the year and put aside in a huff after about four squares.

Well better push on with the rest of the days tasks.

High Tea and other ways to spend election day

I am sheepishly reappearing as I have obviously been very slack!!!!! Here is some pictures of cupcakes I made for my friends birthday on Saturday.

On Friday I made gluten free chocolate cup cakes. Gluten free cooking is something that I have very little experience with and am frankly a little intimidated by it!!!! So to get around this (and as always being short of time) I brought a packet mix (Naturally Good Moist Chocolate Mud Cake Mix) and followed the instructions on the back (too easy :-)). I cooked the cakes for about 25 minutes.

I am pretty sure that my Mum dreads when I call her up and start the conversation with "Mum I've had this great idea." as it generally means I am about to embark on some crazy unobtainable quest. This however is a very rare occurrence where the idea worked perfectly. I wanted to decorate the cup cakes so I piped melted white chocolate on baking paper.

And with the addition of some rapidly setting chocolate ganache and walnuts. I got these -

I also wanted to make Maple Syrup Cupcakes (from Donna Hays Modern Classics Book 2 I think) that Mum and I had made the week before for RSPCA cupcake day at work. So Saturday morning (after I remembered to vote). I got started creaming the butter and sugars together and had walked away for a moment. All of the sudden the kitchen was filled with thick smoke emanating distressingly from our beloved mixer.

This mixer is the mixer that Mum made all of our delicious treats on when we were kids and my brother and I inherited when she got her lime green kitchen aid a few years ago.

After I turned the power off and stamped my foot a little I went and found my brother to rescue me :-). He came in turned it on and off a few times and it stopped smoking and started working again. I was then able to continue on and produce my cup cakes (phew not sure what I would have done if it had died permanently).

I think the break in mixing meant that the butter had time to reset a little as the cupcakes didn't rise as much as last week (and I was missing the trifecta of Mum, her kitchen aid and her oven). I made white chocolate ganache and dark chocolate swirls for decoration.

And if you look closely you can see from right to left the ganache going from runny to almost set as I iced.

My friends birthday party was a high tea with lots and lots cake and cucumber sandwiches and scones. It was a lot of fun and the birthday girl seemed to enjoy herself. I got lots of compliments for both sets of cupcakes. As a present I gave her a copy of the cupcake recipe and the main ingredients in a new cake container (as you can never have enough of those).

After stopping off at another friends housewarming I got home and watched a little of the election coverage to see that Australia has its first Greens seat in the lower house (Yayyyyyyy). (I promise that will be my only political comment ever).

Today I have spent studying, restraining from eating the remaining maple syrup cupcakes (I had one for breakfast), getting a little cleaning done and enjoying a sunny winters day. Oh and drinking lots of cups of tea of course.

Ballet Barbie

Happy New Year. Welcome to 2010, may it be a peaceful and happy year.

For my first adventure in 2010 I went to a 5 year olds fairy princess birthday party. The five year old is Bubbles niece (Bubbles being my brothers girlfriend). I was pretty chuffed to get an invite to the party, apparently I am a big hit with the five year old (not so much with her three year old brother but working on that).

The party was split into the kids and the adults part. The kids party involved pass the parcel and the usual games and then a magician who was pretty fun. Then the kids went home and the family adults party started. It was pretty awesome party - by the end though the five year old had retreated to her room with her new toys.

The five year old started ballet last year and is also very into barbies. So I thought ballet costume for Barbie would be a pretty awesome present. Ages ago I bought a bag of ribbon ends from Spotlight which came in very handy for this project. As usual a lot of the project relied on Mum's uberawesome sewing and knitting skills. She knitted a singlet, shorts and legwarmers. And sewed together a very gothic lolita tutu. All together the outfit looked like this

Modelled here and in following shots by my one remaining Barbie. Her hair hasn't survived so well but it doesn't look too bad bundled up in a bun. Also don't look too closely at her neck, she had an unfortunate beheading by my brother and the heads never go back on quite the same way.

Action Shot. A few moments of boredom on my part also discovered the skirt could be used as a top and the leg warmers as arm warmers.

The final packaged gift - I found this little zip pocket in some old stationary which I thought worked. If you notice the crochet on the top of the shorts that is because Barbie has a rather large bottom and though she looked fine standing up if she sat down she flashed everyone so Mum added a crochet band.


I'm pretty sure she liked it, for the five seconds she looked at it before going on to the next present. She was a very lucky little girl with the presents that she got. It was ok though as Bubbles and I acquired one of her barbies and dressed it up - there were several comments about us enjoying the five year olds toys more than the five year old.

I'm off to Japan on Monday so probably no more posts until after the 29th but I should hopefully have something interesting to talk about then. And maybe even some photos (and some progress) on my first project for 2010 - Learn to Knit Afghan by Barbara G Walker. Last night I was at 1.5 squares completed but then I frogged the one I was working on and haven't gotten back to it (packing and finishing the library book that I can't take to Japan with me has been slightly more pressing). I like the one I have finished though so thats good.

Cooking, dress cutting and Christmas bunting

I managed to go home to Ballarat for a few days this week, chiefly for my Dad's birthday but also to do some sewing and spend time with the parents and Darwin. Dad's birthday was a very quiet family dinner and Mum made an awesome roast and chocolate pudding.

First I finally succeeded in washing the black fabric and getting it dried without bird presents on it. So I cut out the fabric and then gave the pattern to Mum to figure out…..its about half finished at the moment but don’t think I will get home until after Christmas.

I found this fabric in the remnants pile at Spotlight for $1 a piece. Pretty cool I thought and perfect for making some drawstring bags to give as present.

As we are having Christmas day at my house in Melbourne I decided to make some Christmas bunting as decoration. I haven’t really bothered to collect Christmas decorations previously as I always go home for Christmas and I would rather make than buy so I started with the bunting. Not sure that I will be making anything else this year, it might need to be a slow collection of things.

To make quick bunting I used pinking shears to cut the edges. These are my Mums pinking shears (with the original and very cool box).

This is Mum's bunting all pinned and ready to be sewn.

And this is Mum sewing bunting in the studio.....all of the sewing ended up like this with me handing things to Mum as she sewed and then wandering around stealing yarn from her stash to make birthday presents and more stitch practise squares.

Now I am off to work on a beanie for a friend for his birthday.... I told him he may need to wait six months before it is finished.

Friday......

...... and we all know what that means - yes its the Weekend. And this weekend looks like it will be awesome as, after a ridiculously hot 38 degrees today, the temperature of the weekend is set to be mid-20s.

I had to go to work Thursday and Friday so no new crafty stuff unfortunately. Thursday evening though I did manage to purchase a USB card reader so I now have photos...........

Spinach from our garden.
Everyone gave the ugly lasagne the thumbs up and I finished the last piece for dinner tonight. Yum. I hoping the rain will spur the spinach to quickly regrow so that I can make spinach and ricotta filo pastries next.

The dress fabric from the last post.
I haven't had a chance to wash the black fabric yet but that is one of tomorrows tasks.

The (almost) finished Ipod cover.
As we can see from this image I need to learn to be more patient when taking photos to make them look vaguely attractive.

Well that is all from me at the moment. I found my birth certificate today so I will actually be able to get a passport and go to Japan in January. I will put up a post of some of the amazing Japanese craft shops I have found on the internet and hope to visit when I go (lucky I am going with two other people who thinks the idea of 6 floors of fabric is heaven).